ter evenings they study to
good purpose books as varied as Dante, Josephus, Macaulay, Longfellow,
Parton's "Life of Jackson," and the Rollo stories--to mention only
volumes that have been especial favorites with my own cowboys and
hunters.

16. MS. diary of Benj. Hawkins, 1796. Preserved in Nash. Historical Soc.
In 1796 buffalo were scarce; but some fresh signs of them were still
seen at licks.

17. Haywood, p. 75, etc. It is a waste of time to quarrel over who first
discovered a particular tract of this wilderness. A great many hunters
traversed different parts at different times, from 1760 on, each
practically exploring on his own account. We do not know the names of
most of them; those we do know are only worth preserving in county
histories and the like; the credit belongs to the race, not the
individual.

18. From twenty to forty. Compare Haywood and Marshall, both of whom are
speaking of the same bodies of men; Ramsey makes the mistake of
supposing they are speaking of different parties; Haywood dwells on the
feats of those who descended the Cumberland; Marshall of those who went
to Kentucky.

19. The so-called mound builders; now generally considered to have been
simply the ancestors of the present Indian races.

20. Led by one James Knox.

21. His real name was Kasper Mansker, as his signature shows, but he was
always spoken of as Mansco.

22. McAfee MSS. ("Autobiography of Robt. McAfee"). Sometimes the term
Long Hunters was used as including Boon, Finley, and their companions,
sometimes not; in the McAfee MSS. it is explicitly used in the former
sense.

23. See Haywood for Clinch River, Drake's Pond, Mansco's Lick, Greasy
Rock, etc., etc.

24. A hunter named Bledsoe; Collins, II., 418.

25. Carr's "Early Times in Middle Tennessee," pp. 52, 54, 56, etc.

26. The hunter Bledsoe mentioned in a previous note.

27. As Haywood, 81.

28. This continued to be the case until the buffalo were all destroyed.
When my cattle came to the Little Missouri, in 1882, buffalo were
plenty; my men killed nearly a hundred that winter, though tending the
cattle; yet an inexperienced hunter not far from us, though a hardy
plainsman, killed only three in the whole time. See also Parkman's
"Oregon Trail" for an instance of a party of Missouri backwoodsmen who
made a characteristic failure in an attempt on a buffalo band.

29. See Appendix.

30. An English engineer made a rude survey or table of distances of the
Ohi